Assoc. Prof. Peter Kline
Research Co-ordinator & Lecturer in Theology
PhD (Vanderbilt University), MDiv (Princeton Theological Seminary), MTh (University of Edinburgh), BA (Wheaton College)
Contact Details
📞 07 3514 7418
✉️ pkline@ministryeducation.org.au
Profile
Peter Kline is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at St Francis College, University of Divinity. He received his PhD from Vanderbilt University as part of their Theology and Practice program, and his first book is titled Passion for Nothing: Kierkegaard’s Apophatic Theology (Fortress Press, 2017). Peter has since published a number of articles and book chapters on a range of topics, including mysticism, feminism, art, and critical theory. In 2021, he received the “Most Productive Early Career Researcher” award from Charles Sturt University, and in 2023, he became a research fellow in a Templeton Grant project on theology and psychology through the University of Birmingham.
Peter’s current research is at the intersections of psychoanalysis and religion. He is currently working on a monograph with the provisional title Infinite Seduction: Religion and the Sexual Unconscious, which seeks to offer a psychoanalytic account of religious subjectivity in conversation with Jean Laplanche. The research aims to use Laplanche’s “general theory of seduction” as a framework to explore sexuality, alterity, and trauma in the construction and deconstruction of theological meaning. The core thesis of the book is that religion (its practices and theories) variously stages and works on “the originary relation to the enigma of the other” (Laplanche). Rather than simply explain religion by way of psychoanalysis, the book will venture a theology of the unconscious that thinks God under the name “infinite seduction.”
Peter teaches units on mysticism, ecotheology, disability theology, and the trinity. He is open to enquiries for supervision from prospective doctoral and minor thesis students in any area of theological studies. He has previously supervised theses on feminist theology, trauma, and the arts.
Peter has written for Anglican Focus and has appeared on ABC’s Soul Search.
I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who wish to work in any of the above mentioned areas and in the broader field of Systematic Theology.
Publications
Scholarly Monograph
Passion for Nothing: Kierkegaard’s Apophatic Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, September 2017.
Journal Articles
“God is Blackness: Mysticism of the Unowned Earth,” Abolition: A Journal of Radical Theory and Practice, 2022.
“Blurred Theology: On the Colour Black,” St Marks Review, 2019 (249), p. 115-127.
“Imaging Nothing: Kierkegaard and the Imago Dei,” Anglican Theological Review, vol. 100 no. 4, Fall 2018
“Absolute Action: Divine Hiddenness in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling,” Modern Theology, vol. 28 no. 3, July 2012.
“Participation in God and the Nature of Christian Community: Robert Jenson and Eberhard Jüngel,” International Journal of Systematic Theology, vol. 13 no. 1, January 2011.
Book Chapters
“Christ without the Phallus,” in Speaking of Christa, SCM, 2022.
“Against Innocence: Feminism and Original Sin,” Interstices & Fractures: (Re)Visions of Feminist Theologies, Decolonizing Theology Series, Lexington Fortress Press, eds. Stephen Burns and Rebekah Pryor, 2021.
“Becoming Flesh,” Afterlives: Jesus in a Global Perspective, The Westar Studies Series, ed. Gregory Jenks, Wipf & Stock, 2021.
“Infinite Reduplication: Kierkegaard’s Negative Concept of God,” in Contemporary Debates in Negative Theology and Philosophy, eds. Nahum Brown and J. Aaron Simmons. Palgrave-MacMillan, 2017
“’You Wonder Where The Spirit Went’: Barth and Jenson on the Hiddenness of God,” in Barth in Conversation, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014.
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